Trip Truck

big world - short life

Dometic Products

The Dometic group has a range of brands and products that are very widely used across the leisure vehicle market. The products are ubiquitous and unquestionably of immense value to countless RV and boat owners. That said, based on personal experience - plus that of several owners I know - all too often their products can be a little flimsy, troublesome, and sometimes lead to questions regarding dubious quality control.

For example, Seitz windows, though a really useful product for any self builder, require a delicate touch to get the best service life. The handles, hinges, blinds and fly-screens in particular seem to feature regularly in complaints about flimsy construction quality. Those travelling with young children or who tend - by nature - to be impatient or ham-fisted, may well find ownership frustrating. This should be taken in context though, with a degree of care, the windows do perform very well indeed and are a godsend to the self-builder, offering, as they do, a neat and simple solution.

Of the many Dometic group items performing duty on the truck, we have personally had adverse issues with the following:

Lights. The triangular down-light units we used throughout the truck were all purchased at the same time from the same dealer in order to ensure consistency in appearance and LED modules. However, it turned out that the 5 separate units we purchased featured no fewer than 3 different LED modules, one of which was an atrocious fit. This resulted in three different types of luminosity / cast. Attempts to rectify this through the retailer (CAK) were not particularly sympathetically resolved. Eventually, I gave up with CAK and approached Dometic itself. I offered to pay for 5 matching LED units and with great credit to the company, within a very short period of time, I received 5 identical modules direct from Germany at no cost. First class service.

Fridge. The Waeco branded Dometic fridge developed a fault after only two years (just after warranty expiration) whereby the compressor / fan, once reaching the point at which the interior was cooled to the thermostatically set temperature, would not shut off properly. Instead of fully stopping, the fan / compressor would immediately fire up again, run for anything between a fraction of a second and a few minutes, before stopping again, then re-firing, then stopping, then re-firing, then stopping… it was mental torture. It seemed incredibly obvious to me that either the thermostat or electronic control board was duff. The retailers and Dometic customer services were initially unhelpful suggesting all manner of issues from fluff in the fan unit to a lack of appropriate operating voltage. I had to be persistent, but eventually Dometic UK customer services sent out a complete replacement thermostat unit, again free of charge, and this cured the problem instantly.

Toilet. The first model 972 toilet that we bought was supplied with a split in the upper flush tank which meant it was impossible to pressurise it using the built in hand pump which rendered the flush system useless. After a troublesome exchange with the retailer (CAK - again), the replacement worked well for about two years. However, following one winter trip I was cleaning out the holding tank and as part of the process tried to slide open the holding tank paddle but was dismayed to be met with a cracking sound and the handle breaking clean off in my hand. I had not used force, or tried to operate it at an odd angle, it just simply broke during ‘normal’ operation. No explanation or apology was forthcoming from Dometic and we had to fork out for a new unit.

As mentioned on one of the previous ‘Issues and Fixes’ pages, a couple of the standard-issue push-fit fuel fittings gave trouble whilst on the road. They initially caused some anxiety-inducing fuel leaks, and ultimately a total stranding. In short, these fittings are now 100% confirmed as unfit for purpose. Having spoken to many T244 owners, it turns out that in many cases - in an effort to reduce the number of the fittings required - the standard-fit sedimenter bowl had been bypassed by MoD mechanics before the trucks were released. A result of the sedimenter-bowl bypass means that instead of benefiting from a proper filtration process, fuel delivered from the main fuel tank runs straight into the engine’s lift pump. The consequences for fuel contaminated with water or debris compromising both the lift pump and the main fuel filter are starkly obvious. Our truck was one of those on which the sedimenter bowl had been decommissioned, but this was far from obvious (with a casual glance): pipework to and from it was intact but was disconnected and hidden deeply away in a fat loom of other pipes and wires. All pointers are that the MoD mechanics decommission the standard setup for good reason: it's a breakdown waiting to happen.

Naturally, I wanted to properly pre-filter the fuel and make use of the sedimenter bowl so took it off, stripped, cleaned and re-mounted it; in the process re-commissioning all of the original pipework and fittings. That should have been the end of it but, to cut a (very) long story short, there was no way the engine would run with the system returned to its bog-standard spec. The causes were not immediately obvious but after a great deal of time, frustration and days spent stinking of diesel, it turned out there were at least two separate issues at play. The first was the aforementioned troublesome push-fit fittings. In spite of not actually leaking diesel, the original bowl-mounted fittings were sucking air into the fuel delivery system: an immediate fail for any diesel engine. Newly purchased push-fit fittings (not cheap) brought some improvement, the engine would then run but all was not solved: the time taken to crank it into life was a real source of worry. It sometimes took 20 seconds or more to splutter into life and that was in high ambient temperatures with batteries fully charged. Not good.

The second issue seemed to me to be the physical position of the sedimenter. As standard, this is mounted high above the lift pump. This forces the pump to work really hard: not only is it required to suck fuel through the bowl, but to also work against gravity. I decided to experiment and fabricated a bracket to mount the sedimenter much lower down (tucked out of harm's way) a few inches below the pump. This did the trick - well temporarily at least. With new push-fit fittings and the bowl re-positioned, for a few months anyway, the truck started absolutely instantly every time.

As it turned out, persisting with the standard push-fit fittings was a major error. The new ones I'd bought started sucking air after only a very short period of time and I finally did the sensible thing and had some new fuel delivery pipes made up utilising properly crimped fittings.

In conclusion, throw the standard push-fit fittings away immediately, have some decent pipes made, and consider lowering the sedimenter bowl.